After the handover: five systems, six years on

Fieldstone has no staff in Morocco. We have no office, no vehicle, no programme budget, and no operational role of any kind on the Tazgart Plain. We handed over five village water systems in 2019 and left.

Once a year, someone flies to Agadir, drives four hours, and inspects five pieces of infrastructure that are not ours, because in 2019 we said we would do that every year for as long as they are standing.

Four systems are functioning. Aït Ouzzine, Tamnougalt, Zaouia, and Tighmert all delivered water throughout 2025. The Aït Ouzzine committee replaced a pump in 2022 and a control valve in 2024, both from its own levy, without contacting us.

The Tighmert intake was destroyed by a flood in September 2023. The committee rebuilt it over eleven months in 2024, at a cost it met from its reserve and a contribution from the village council. We were informed after the work was finished. Our inspection that year consisted of being shown it.

The system at Ighrem has not delivered water since 2021. Its committee dissolved after a dispute over the levy that we do not fully understand and have no standing to arbitrate. The infrastructure is intact. The institution is not, and the institution was always the harder of the two to build.

We publish Ighrem every year, by name, in the same table and the same typeface as the four that work. A 91% functioning rate across the programme means nothing if the 9% is aggregated into a footnote.